Articles - > PS3 H.264 Conversion Guide

Title:	PS3 H.264 Conversion Guide
Description:	This guide shows you how to convert DVD/AVI/DivX/XviD/MOV files to a PS3 compatible H.264 file that can uses AAC or AC3 5.1 audio, covering 3 methods for making MP4, VOB or a M2TS stream
Author/Publisher:	DVDGuy
Ease of use:	Intermediate
Software Used:	MeGUI, mkv2vob, Nero Digital Audio Decoder/Encoder, tsMuxeR, TVersity
Page Viewed:	476936 times

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monzaa: i seem to be having trouble...
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Page 4 of 10: MeGUI: Video Encoding Options

We'll now set up the H.264 encoding options in the x264 encoder. This step has the most options to configure, and this is where PS3 compatibility is determined. This guide won't go into detail about all the options, just the ones you need to ensure PS3 compatibility - and if you need further explanation of the options, refer to our x264 Options Explained article.

In the MeGUI "Input" section, select "x264" as the "Codec". We will select a container format later on, so just leave it as the default setting for now.

The PS3's H.264 video support is limited to the following (you don't need to understand what it all means):

AVC Profile: Baseline, Main or High Profiles
Maximum bitrate: None specified (although testing shows stuttering occuring above 20 Mbps)
AVC Level: 4.1
No B-Pyramid and P4x4 support

For the "Video Profiles" option in MeGUI, you should see several pre-defined encoding profiles for H.264 encoding (a profile is a saved set of encoding settings). When this guide was last updated, the process was to take one of the "CE" profiles and then add the above restrictions to make new profiles. But with the new version of MeGUI, new profiles were made and one specifically for the PS3 (and the Xbox 360) was produced. To compare the new "PD" profiles with the old "CE" profiles, please refer to this page.

There are two profiles available to use, the "PD-PS3-Xbox360" profile and the "PD-PS3-Xbox360_Fast". The "Fast" profile will provide faster encoding at the expense of quality. Select the profile you want to use (eg. "PD-PS3-Xbox360") from the "Video Profiles" drop down menu.

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Article Navigation:

Page 1: Introduction + Installation
Page 2: DVD/MPEG-2 Conversion
Page 3: MeGUI: AviSynth Script Creator
Page 4: MeGUI: Video Encoding Options <--
Page 5: MeGUI: Audio Encoding Options
Page 6: MeGUI: Cutting, Bitrate Calculator and AutoEncode
Page 7: Method 1: MP4 container with AAC audio
Page 8: Method 2: VOB container with AC3/DTS audio
Page 9: Method 3: M2TS (M2T) container with AC3 audio
Page 10: TVersity: Playing the H.264 file on your PS3

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i seem to be having trouble with the v2.6 if MeGUI. anyone else having probs?

This guide worked like a charm when encoding to AAC, however, when selecting the mkv container and AC3, i keep getting a fatal error in MeGUI. "Input and Output files may not be same Source of exception...". Has anyone else seen this. I've tried from the scratch twice now, and always get this error when I push "autoencode". Thanks!

skro: In AutoEncode, try to set the output file name to be different to any of the input files - try a different directory to save the file if you can

I believe that this guide may need updating, or you need to make seperate guides for AAC and AC3 audio streams. The reason? http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3media&thread.id=96630 I found a way to get seeking to work, but only with AC3 files. And no, this IS NOT the one-step MKV -> VOB way.

Thanks Breakthrough, for the heads up. I'm in the process of updating the guide already, and the new version should be available in a few day's time

Thanks DVDGuy. Again, the only problem with my method is the lack of any other audio stream (DTS/AAC don't work, but I'm still testing PCM). Also, I haven't tested streaming it with TVersity. Now, for my question to you. In my process, I noted that you HAVE to process the video through H264info (regardless if you set the encoder settings properly). I followed this guide exactly, and got a playable stream - however, it doesn't work in a .M2TS container. The reason? I noticed that, when I put the .264 file right from MeGUI (along with the .AC3 stream) into tsMuxeR, and began to mux them, I got a "frame delimiter absent" error. It still processes, but the resultant stream fails to play; only after processing it with H264info does it work. Do you have any clue why this happens, and how to solve it? I don't know much about MeGUI, so maybe it's an option that only relates to the resultant stream? I couldn't find anything in Google, and it'd be nice to eliminate this step (because, more often than not, it's quite time consuming). Thanks! :)

There is an option within x264 for "Access Unit Delimiter" (--aud), which is necessary for storage within MPEG-2 transport streams. Might have to test if enabling this will get rid of the "frame delimiter absent" error

Hi There. I have a problem with the audio decoding. I have several movies with the length of almost 2 hours. After decoding the AC3 soundmix, It will sort of stop by 199.1MB. the projected size will decrease to also 199.1 MB. this will happen by al these movies. When i play the audio file it stopped after the same time as the 199.1MB, When i try to decode a movie with only 43 minutes it does work. does anyone knows with is wrong? tnx for the answer. and thanx for the Tut.

is it normal that after 6 hours im still on job 2. I have 4 jobs: Audio,AVC 1st pass,AVC 2nd pass,mux . Im still on 90% of job2 after at least 6-7 hours.my pc: P4530J 3GHZ 1GB ram GF6600GT, 160 GB SATA HDD

AVC encoding takes a while. For reference, on a P4 3.2 GHz, it takes 30 minutes to encode a 2 minute 720p video (from an 1080p source).

so it's not very pleasant method.If you have to make 30 hour(at least) operation for a 2 hour movie ... ? how would you comment on that ?

The encoding time I quoted was for a P4 3.2 GHz, which is quite outdated now. Modern CPUs should do it a lot faster, but you're still looking at several hours to encode your typical movie. Unfortunately that's the major problem with AVC at the moment, since it's a great quality codec, but it takes a lot of CPU to encode and decode - quality comes at a price. Future CPU/GPUs will support accelerated encoding (I think Nvidia recently demonstrated a transcoding of a 2 hour HD video using their GPU, and it only took only 20 minutes to do the whole thing), and x264 (the encoding engine used by MeGUI) will be updated to include more of these types of acceleration/optimizations in the future.

I made one encoding.I reencoded from 720p mkv file with DTS sound to a 720p(used the resize function and chose 1280x*** suggested resolution) VOB Container with 384Kbps for audio.The file turned out to be 4,62GB although I specified 1DVD on two drop-down menus and I'm not sure but if I remember correct estimated size was not bigger than a DVD can hold.Is this normal and what do I have to change to reduce my filesize to fit a single DVD?Do I have to do all over again because the reencoding took my PC 2 and a half days or is there a fast working splitter to split them in a sec.Thanks in advance.

Awesome guide! on a somewhat related note, does anyone know how to resize/reencode a HDDVD to something playable on ps3 through Tversity? With the format being dead, I'm worried I won't be able to play back my collection once my hddvd addon dies..... I understand it is possible to rip the discs as is, but that will take too much space. I'd like to resize to 720p, and get it in a format the ps3 can read. Any ideas????? Thanks!

tosvus: There's a HD DVD to Blu-ray guide floating around somewhere on the net, which might interest you. I might get around to write a version of this guide too here.

There is no need to fix the h264 stream with H264info anymore. In fact, "fixing" the stream will actually break it (it will still be playable but with glitches). I have a question about b-pyramids: Is it still true, that the PS3 doesn't support it? I just tried a sample with b-pyramids allowed and it works fine. Though I'm not sure if b-pyramids are actually used.